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April 26, 2016

It's always a good idea to block out time on your calendar for appointments with yourself to be sure that you are working on the things that are important to you, not just the ones that are urgent. Now there’s a way to automate that process.

Google recently announced a new feature for their Google Calendar. It’s called Goals, and it lets you tell Google Calendar to fill in unallocated hours with goals that you might otherwise forget or keep pushing into the background. Examples include exercising, learning a language, or reading more.

April 25, 2016

What sounds help you focus?

Finding a quiet place to work is harder these days, and one alternative is to generate sounds you find less distracting than the ambient ones.

For that purpose, a site I've discovered recently, Noisli.com, is useful and it features some attractive extra functions. The desktop version is free, the Web app/iOS app costs $1.99.

The sounds available:

Steady rain

Thunderstorm

Wind

Birds singing

Leaves rustling in the wind

River

Ocean

Water gently swishing

Crackling fire

Crickets

Busy coffee shop

Train (my favourite)

Airplane engine

White noise (three different ones)

You can also combine sounds, share your combinations with others, set a timer, and even have access to a distraction-free text editor (plain text or Markdown syntax). The latter will save your material locally and you can export it as well. The background colours change gradually but you can turn that feature off.

April 07, 2016

What’s the solution to the fear of failure?

We know that successful people are not immune to fearing failure, so how do they still manage to succeed?

This is my third and last post that steals, er, curates, the ideas proposed by organizational psychologist Adam Grant in his TED talk. He says that successful people do fear failure…but, even more, they fear not having tried.

These people can put aside their fear long enough to come up with lots of ideas and lots of projects. They look at bad ideas as part of the process, and the same goes for rejection and failure. They see those as steps on the road to success.

They don't give up, so if one day they face death without having realized their dream, well, at least they will know they gave it their best shot. A study of the regrets of very old people backs this up--most of them said they regretted more the things they didn't do than the things they did.

My quest for 100 rejections

I’ve recently put this into action with something that I was finding depressing—the fact that so far agents have failed to grasp the greatness of my YA novel. I'd received about a dozen rejections, most in the form of hearing nothing back.

Rather than suffer with each new rejection, I decided I to go for 100 rejections. I don’t rule out the idea of rewriting the manuscript if I get useful feedback, and I’m moving forward on other projects at the same time. If some astute agent wants to handle it before I get to 100, that’s fine, too. But in the meantime, it allows me to be playful and philosophical instead of depressed.

Three ways to re-frame a problem

The cliché, “It’s all how you look at it,” is true, as is the maxim, “It’s not what happens, it’s how you respond to what happens.” (Actually, it IS partly about what happens, but your response is even more important.)

In the previous post, I mentioned “the best-friend strategy,” in which you consider your own problem as though it belonged to your best friend, and decide what advice you’d give them. That’s one example of re-framing.

Another is to change the time context of whatever is happening. If you are upset about something, imagine going forward a month in time. Do you think it will still upset you? What about six months from now? A year from now? In many cases, putting it into perspective as one of many things that are happening and will happen brings down your anxiety level immediately.

The third re-frame is good for situations in which you can’t see the way forward.You're taking something you consider impossible and re-frame it as possible.

Even if you have come to the conclusion there is nothing you can do about it, imagine you’re interviewing yourself and ask, “But if you could, how would you do it?”

You repeat the question until you come up with something. Here’s an example:

"I’d like to take a two-week vacation in Europe this summer, but I can’t, I don’t have the money."

But if you could, how would you do it?

"I can’t!"

But if you could, how would you do it?

"I’d have to find a way that’s free or really, really cheap. And the places I want to go aren’t cheap."

If you could find a way to go free or really cheaply, how would you do it?

"I’d have to find somebody who has a place who’d let me stay, but I don’t know anybody like that."

If you could look for somebody who has a place to let you stay free, how would you do it?

"Well, maybe I could do some work for them, but I really want to enjoy myself…wait a minute, there are house-swaps and house-sitting agencies…"

A solution may not come quite that quickly, but often if you persist you will find a way.

REFRAMING IN THE FACE OF DISASTER

Admittedly, there are situations that are just plain awful, but even in those a re-frame can be helpful.

For instance, the Irish practice of holding a wake for the departed moves the emphasis from grief for what we have lost to a celebration of what we had. That doesn’t negate the loss, but it helps balance it with a more positive element.

The reframes that work in the face of true disaster don’t deny that terrible things happen, but they can help us remember that sooner or later the wheel of fate will turn.

April 05, 2016

Can procrastination be a virtue for creativity?

Apparently it can, in moderation.

In a TED talk, organizational psychologist Adam Grant says a study showed that people who rush into doing things and people who wait until the last minute both have fewer innovative ideas than those who procrastinate for a little while but then get to work.

The period of moderate procrastination allows people to let the challenge or the task marinate for a bit, and often that leads to new ideas.

By the way, it was news to me that there are people who can’t wait to get started on an essay or report or anything else with a deadline. I don’t think I’ve ever met one. You can guess which camp I’m in (and I bet you’re in the same one).

He also points out that the first-mover advantage is mostly a myth.

Generally, you’re better off being an “improver”—one who lets somebody else pioneer and educate the customer, and then comes up with something similar but better. He cites the statistic that in business, first movers have a 47% failure rate, whereas for improvers it’s only 8%.

If you tend to rush to start or wait until the last possible moment, consider trying the middle path and see whether you get better results. I’m planning to try it myself…in a little while.

March 29, 2016

This is one of those, "Is it just me?" quandaries, where you wonder whether what you're experiencing is universal, or personal and probably you'll just embarrass yourself by mentioning it. I'm talking about how disappointing my Future Self often turns out to be when he turns into my Present Self.

Here's an example. I belong to a lot of MeetUp groups. If you haven't heard of those, check out MeetUp.com, and you'll find hundreds, probably thousands, of groups of people interested in specific topics and activities, like photography, art, cooking and just about every other subject you can imagine.

I'll see something interesting scheduled for a week from now, like an interesting talk or a visit to a gallery or a mini-workshop.

My Future Self is a gregarious, fine fellow, a man of the world who pursues many interests. I sign him up for the event and we are both happy.

When it's time to go to the event, my Future Self has turned into my Present Self, and something has definitely gone wrong in the interim.

My future self is unconcerned with trivial details like the weather. My Present Self looks out the window and sees that it's drizzling and thinks, 'Do I really want to go out? '

Whereas my Future Self was certain he would meet interesting new people, my Present Self remembers that time I went to an event and got buttonholed for thirty minutes by The World's Most Boring Man Who Also Had Bad Breath.

My Future Self didn't bother with the details of how he would get to the venue. My Present Self looks at the Underground map and sees he'd have to change twice and walk twenty minutes.

My Present Self decides to stay home and Get Things Done. He can envision the short-term Future Self catching up on paperwork, clearing up the home office, getting a start on organizing those documents for the tax return. Yes, we have made the right decision and the Future Self will get to work right after dinner!

After dinner, the former Future Self notices that one of our favorite movies is starting on BBC2. When the movie ends he decides it's too late to get started on any work, it'll be best to leave it for tomorrow.

My Future Self was going to finish this post with a brilliant solution to this problem, but once again he's let us down.

February 01, 2016

A study suggests that typing more slowly increases the quality of your writing. Study participants who typed with only one hand produced essays of a higher quality than when they used both hands.

The study is published in the British Journal of Psychology under the sexy title, "Effects of Disfluency in Writing."

The study's authors suggest that slowing done your writing makes it less likely that you'll go with the first word that occurs to you. Instead, you have time to consider alternatives and use the best one.

Some writers have found the same effect when they do their first draft in handwriting. I've found it to be true when I've used long airplane trips for writing something by hand.

Especially if you find it difficult to reconsider your word choice when doing a second draft, slowing down when you write the first one could be useful.

In any event, it's a useful reminder that faster is not always better.

January 13, 2016

A study published in the journal PNAS (Aucouturier et al., 2015) suggests that slightly changing the tone of your voice may make you feel happier...or does it?

In the study, researchers let the subjects hear their voices in real time and asked them how happy they were. In some cases they didn't manipulate the voices, in some cases they made them sadder, in others they made them sound happier. Then they asked the subjects to rate their level of happiness in that moment.

The results suggest that people listen to their own voices to tell how they feel.

Does it follow that if you make yourself sound happier by changing your voice, you actually will feel happier?

Maybe. The study shows this effect when you don't know your voice is being changed. It could be that when knowing you're doing it on purpose could negate the effect. However, especially since other studies have shown the benefits of purposely changing your posture, it's worth a try.

It's also consistent with what I call the Alter Ego Strategy, which can help you be more productive. Here's a short video about how to use that method--and, yes, next time I'll move the camera farther back :)

November 11, 2015

Well, they've ruined food for us, and drinking, and being in the sun, so I guess it was only a matter of time before scientists would get around to finding out that sitting is bad for us as well. This a topic of special interest to writers, since we spend most of our working time on our posteriors.

SITTERS, BEWARE!

We're talking about serious stuff here: "Studies and reviews have shown that higher levels of sitting are linked with cancer, diabetes, heart disease and even an early death, independently of whether a person takes regular exercise," says ScienceDaily. On the psychological level, sitting down is associated with an increased risk of anxiety.

What's a writer to do? Here's a round-up of the most recent research and some suggestions for minimizing the dangers.

STAND UP!

How can you reduce the amount of time you spend sitting down? Some people use sit-stand desks. Although the desks designed for this are expensive, there are inexpensive stands you can put on your normal desk.

You can also stand during your breaks. Linking it to something you like to do or do regularly, like making phone calls or checking your email or social media, makes it easier to remember. You could also set a repeating alarm on your phone or computer to remind you to stand at various points in your work day.

THE TEN MINUTE SOLUTION

A study at the University of Missouri-Columbia reports that when you sit for six straight hours it impairs your vascular function. The good news: walking for ten minutes after all that sitting restores your vascular health.

If you work in an office, there's a reasonable chance that at the end of the day you'll walk ten minutes to the bus stop or train station, but if you drive and it takes you only a couple of minutes to get to your car (or if, like me, you work at home), walk around for ten minutes at the end of the day.

THE TWO OR THREE MINUTE SOLUTION

A study at the University of Utah suggests that "spending two minutes of walking each hour is associated with a 33% lower chance of dying" --presumably they mean dying prematurely...

The study's authors suggest walking for two minutes an hour as well as getting the recommended 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week.

For writers, pacing while trying to figure out the next scene or chapter sounds like a good strategy.

Another study, this one by the National Institutes for Health, says taking a three-minute break to walk in the middle of sedentary activity can improve children's blood sugar levels and reduce their risk of getting diabetes--so drag your kids away from the X-Box or Playstation and make them walk around with you.

THE FIDGETING SOLUTION

A study at the University of Leeds suggests that fidgeting may be enough to stop long bouts of sitting from shortening your life.

If you don't fidget, should you start? I suspect either you're a fidgeter or you're not and the downside of being one (like making people around you nervous or annoying them) probably outweighs the benefits, so I'd go for one of the other solutions above.

PASS IT ON

If you know somebody who spends a lot of time sitting, why not pass this along to them?

August 03, 2015

No matter how dark things may appear at the moment, it's very likely you still have some things to be grateful for. They may be large or small. They could include:

* the support of a friend

* being appreciated by someone you've helped

* a delicious snack

* a job you like

* earning enough to pay your bills

* a park near your home

* good health

* a music track that makes you feel good

* a favorite shirt or dress

* a smile from a stranger

* a brilliant idea

Even if your general circumstances are not so good, focus on what is good at this moment. For instance, maybe you worry about debts, but at this moment what can you enjoy anyway? A chat with a friend, listening to a favorite music track, watching a favorite TV show, writing a poem or a short story, watering your lovely plants?

The idea isn't to avoid the negative, but often we forget the good things even in the moments we can't do anything about the not so good ones.

YOUR ACTION PLAN:

Rate your happiness on a scale from one to ten, one being absolutely miserable, ten being overjoyed most of the time. Yes, this is subjective, but you'll be comparing yourself only to yourself.

Every day take one minute to jot down at least five things you are grateful for right then. If you do it at breakfast and are enjoying your muffin, that can go on the list. Some items may appear on the list every day, that's fine. Do this for two weeks at whatever time of day works best, ideally roughly the same time every day, and written by hand. You don't need to keep the lists, although you may want to.

At the end of two weeks, rate your happiness again. If you feel you'd continue to get benefit from making your gratitude lists daily, do so. Otherwise, put it in your calendar to do it at least once a week.

Note for writers: Rejections getting you down? Use this tool to remind yourself what aspects of being a writer you are grateful for: your ideas, the time to write, the support of your writing group, etc.

(If you are having a hard time getting over a traumatic or stressful event, check out the method recommended here.)

August 02, 2015

If you're unhappy because you can't seem to get over a traumatic or stressful event, you may have trouble sleeping, working, and relating to others as well as you'd like to. If that's the case, try expressive writing.

As recounted in Richard Wiseman's excellent book, :59 Seconds, a number of studies have shown that people who spent a few minutes each day writing about their thoughts and deep feelings about the traumatic event experienced a "remarkable boost in their psychological and physical well-being." They had fewer health issues than a similar control group and increased their happiness and self-esteem.

Typically, the participants wrote about things like losing their job, the end of a relationship, or a major mistake they made that had negative consequences, but you can write about anything that is causing you distress and keeping you from moving on.

YOUR ACTION PLAN:

At the start, rate your happiness from 1 to 10, one being totally unhappy, 10 being joyful most of the time. This is a totally subjective scale, but that doesn't matter; you'll only be comparing yourself with yourself.

Every day for a week, spend a few minutes writing, ideally by hand, about whatever you want to get over. This is not for anybody' else's eyes, so don't worry about making neatness or mistakes. If you like, you can throw it away as soon as you've written it or at the end of the week.

At the end of the week, rate your happiness again. If your score has improved but you feel you might get additional value by repeating the exercise for another week, do so.

If you feel this method has taken you as far as it can, move on to the exercise in the next post. Of course, you can do more than one type of exercise per day if you have the time.

Note for writers: If you're suffering from a writing block or want to get over rejections, this is an ideal tool.

May 29, 2015

We know that taking a short break during a long writing session is helpful, but research shows a surprising reason. Apparently, focusing exclusively on one task for a long time can actually make it disappear from your mind.

One of the authors of the study, Alejandro Lleras, compared it to the way we tend to stop noticing anything that is constant in our environment. For instance, you may put a poster on your wall. The first few times you see it, you notice the colors and perhaps it cheers you up. After you’ve seen it every day for a while, your eyes still see it but it stops registering. As reported on the Psyblog site, Professor Lleras says:

“Constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness…If sustained attention to a sensation makes that sensation vanish from our awareness, sustained attention to a thought should also lead to that thought’s disappearance from our mind!”

He tested this with two groups. One focused on one task for 50 minutes without interruption, the other switched tasks from time to time. The performance of the first group went down, the performance of the other group stayed comparatively high.

The brain responds to changes, so even if you feel you are too busy to take a total break, at least switch to doing another task for a few minutes and then get back to the main one. Since research also suggests that sitting for too long is bad for you, an easy way to do this is simply to get up, walk around the room, perhaps drink a glass of water, and then get back to work. During this brief break be sure to think about something other than just the project you’re working on, or it may not function as intended.

However, in terms of writing, if you find yourself in a flow state, with the words coming to you easily, I'd advise that you keep going.

May 07, 2015

If you write at night you may also find yourself snacking more during that time (unfortunately, I'm speaking from experience). I assumed this might be a distraction gambit--a trip to the fridge gives you time to think about what to write next. However, a new study reveals that something else may be happening.

As reported in Science Daily, researcher Travis Masterson said, "You might over-consume at night because food is not as rewarding, at least visually, at that time of day. It may not be as satisfying to eat at night so you eat more to try to get satisfied."

The study also showed that we are more preoccupied with food at night, even if we don't feel any less full than at other times of day.

The researchers used MRI scans to see how the brain reacts to images of food. They found lower reward-related brain response to food images in the evening. Not surprisingly, they also found that the brain gets more excited when it registers images of high-calorie food (ice cream, baked goods...oh oh, I'm getting hungry...) than when it is presented with pictures of low-calorie foods (vegetables, grains, fish).

The practical value of the findings may be limited. We can tell ourselves that we don't need these snacks and that our brain is tricking us, but logic doesn't stand much of a chance when pitted against a big bowl of ice cream. Probably the best solution still is not to have that kind of food in the house in the first place.

March 16, 2015

I don't listen to classical music very often. If you don't, either, maybe we should start. Here's a summary of a University of Helskinki study of the influence of classical music on our genes, as reported in Science Daily:

Although listening to music is common in all societies, the biological determinants of listening to music are largely unknown. According to a new study, listening to classical music enhanced the activity of genes involved in dopamine secretion and transport, synaptic neurotransmission, learning and memory, and down-regulated the genes mediating neurodegeneration. Several of the up-regulated genes were known to be responsible for song learning and singing in songbirds, suggesting a common evolutionary background of sound perception across species.

It would be interesting to find out whether other kinds of music have the same effect. In the meantime, I'm listening to Mozart's Violin Sonata No. 32 in B-Flat Major and I feel better already...

If there is a piece of classical music that you feel is especially powerful, feel free to share it in the comments.

February 02, 2015

We all know how it goes: resolutions are made on January 1st and generally they’re forgotten by February 1st. If we don’t take action, we’ll end 2015 making exactly the same resolutions again. That doesn’t mean you’re lazy or lack ambition, it means you’re human and nobody’s helped you do it right.

HERE’S WHAT NOT TO DO

Do not just try to do the same thing, only this time on February 1st! It didn’t work in January, it’s not going to work in February or March or April. There’s a better way.

FOUR SIMPLE STEPS? REALLY?

How come books on achieving your goals make it so complicated? Well, you wouldn’t pay for a book as short as this email, would you? People have to pad it out and give it some kind of fancy name so that you’ll hand over some money. I make my money doing other stuff, so I can be concise. I’m not selling anything. Weird, huh?

IMAGINE IT’S NEXT NEW YEAR’S EVE

Imagine it’s New Year’s Eve, 2015. What’s the ONE THING you want to have be different? What do you want to feel proud that you did? For instance:

* you got your weight and fitness levels where you want them

* you started your own business

* you wrote that book you’ve been thinking about

* you improved your relationship with your kids

* you learned a new language

* you got your finances in order

STEP ONE. Complete this sentence, in writing:

“By the end of this year, the one thing I definitely want to achieve is________________________.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t achieve other things as well, but this is going to be your highest priority, so pick something you’d really be proud to have done. If you achieve it in less than a year, great! You can move on to your next goal.

BIG RESULTS COME FROM SMALL STEPS

You’ve heard the saying, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Well, it continues with a single step, too. Lots of single steps.

One of the main reasons people fail to achieve their resolutions is they don’t chunk down their goal into small enough bits. They start out big--maybe taking an hour a day to exercise, for instance...but then life takes over. The stuff you used to do in the time you’re now spending on exercising still needs to be done, so you fall behind. And before you know it, it’s too hard to keep up the new effort and you stop.

STEP TWO. Fill in these two sentences once a week, in writing:

This week, here’s what I’m going to do to move toward my goal during just one session of 15 minutes a day:________________________________________. To make this possible here’s what i’m going to do 15 minutes a day less: __________________________________.

First, what can you achieve in only 15 minutes? If you’re learning a language, you can learn a new word or two. If you want to write a book, you can jot down notes about the plot, the characters, the theme. If you want to improve your relationship with somebody, you can spend 15 minutes a day listening--not talking or judging or giving advice, just listening--to them. If you want to get your finances in order, you can set up a filing system and use it on all the receipts and other documents that are in a big jumble at the moment.

The reason you fill in these sentences once a week is that what you will be doing will change as you make progress. Once you’ve spent a few weeks jotting down general ideas about your book, you may decide to spend that 15 minutesa day working on the main plot points. Once you’ve learned a bunch of new words in another language you may decide to spend 15 minutes a day listening to audio lessons on how to form simple sentences, Most of the time you’ll find it easy to figure out the next logical thing to do.

Second, what can you do less of? If you’re getting more than 7 or 8 hours a night of sleep, you can sleep 15 minutes less. Set your alarm 15 minutes earlier, or go to bed 15 minutes later. Or you may choose to eliminate 15 minutes a day of TV, Facebook or Twitter time, or something else. There isn’t anybody who can’t find a spare fifteen minutes a day.

YOUR MEMORY SUCKS (AT LEAST MINE DOES)

You may think there’s no danger that you’ll forget to do your 15 minutes a day, but there is. Trust me, I’ve done it myself.

We need to remind ourselves to do it. One way is to link it to something we do already--something we like or need to do, so we never forget to do it. For instance, you might decide:

* I will not have breakfast until I’ve done the 15 minutes. Put a note on your box of cereal or on your fridge to remind you.

* I will not watch any TV until I’ve done the 15 minutes. Put the note on your remote control.

* I will not look at Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest / Whatever until I’ve done the 15 minutes Put the note on your computer screen or your tablet or phone.

* I will not put on my shoes until I’ve done the 15 minutes. Put the note on your shoes.

You can also set an alarm, or authorize somebody in your household to remind you every day, or make a pact with a buddy to phone or email each other every day, or email yourself at the end of every day. It’s a good idea to use two or three methods at first, to make sure that you’re remembering to do the fifteen minutes. Eventually it will become a habit, but that may take six weeks or more.

Also set up a way to remind yourself to review your progress once a week and set out the plan for the next week. Put it into your calendar, add an alarm to that day, schedule a call with a buddy so you can compare progress and support each other in setting up the following week, or whatever works best for you. It may take a few tries until you find the method that works every time.

STEP THREE. Fill in the following:

To remind myself to do this every day, I will: _________________________________. If that doesn’t work, I will:________________________________________. To remind myself to review the week and set out the plan for the next week, I will:___________________________________________.

If you ever lapse, take that as a signal to try something else, not to give up doing the 15 minutes!

STEP FOUR. Do it now.

I lied. There are really only three steps, but I’m making the fourth one do it today. Ideally, NOW. Skip reading the rest of your emails for the next fifteen minutes. If you haven’t filled in the sentences above, that can be your fifteen minute task for the day. That, plus setting up whatever kind of reminders you’re going to use. If you’d like to have a goals buddy, forward this email to them and invite them to join you.

Did you notice that I asked you to fill in the sentences “in writing”? You need to write or print out those completed sentences and keep them where you can see them every day. That’s an important part of the method, please don’t skip it.

WHAT ABOUT STUFF THAT CAN’T BE DONE IN 15 MINUTES A DAY?

By putting in lots of daily short sessions, you will gain momentum. You will see your goal starting to become real. You will feel proud of yourself. You will have greater motivation to keep going.

You may reach a point where 15 minutes a day isn’t the ideal way to spend time on your project. That’s fine, then you can get creative about how to find bigger chunks of time. Maybe you will decide to spend 30 minutes every other day. Or maybe you will be excited enough by your progress to give up an hour a night of TV in favor of working on your project. Or maybe your project now seems more desirable than however you used to spend your Saturdays, and you give it a full day every week.

The process will be basically the same, though. For every new chunk of time, you decide on something to give up, you work out each week what you’re going to do, you set up reminders for yourself, and you keep going. The closer you get to your goal, the more exciting and easier this gets.

ANY QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions about how you can apply this to your own situation, feel free to email me:[email protected]. If I can help, I will.